Google Ingress Released: Augmented Reality Game for Mobile Gamers

After a stealth teaser campaign that stirred up enough publicity, Google has released ‘Ingress’, an augmented reality game for mobile gamers. Ingress is a new augmented reality strategy game that has been developed by Google’s in-house studio, Niantic labs which has already gauged huge publicity due to a stealth teaser that had been released much before.

At the moment, the game is in beta version and can be accessed only by invitation on request by registering for access at ingress.com. It is designed for smartphones with Android Gingerbread or higher. However, since Google wants to extend the game to all users, multiple platform release is very likely to happen in the future. The game is designed such that it undergoes a continuous change and will grow as time goes by. At present, no premium features are offered by the game which is ad-supported and free.

The storyline consists of a mysterious energy that threatens to destroy the world, discovered in Europe by a team of scientists. There are two teams, The Enlightened and The Resistance, and the players are required to join either one of them. The former being followers of the energy and the latter being the group to protect humanity. The game includes tools to help in communicating with fellow players, to collaborate and plan out the mission and also to track the progress made by the players.

A wiki has already been started by the players in order to share ideas, information and any relevant details of the game. Players have to install the application to play it and use the mobile phone’s camera to help in locating and unlocking clues. Since the game is played across several countries, the players are allowed to keep track of each other. On installing Ingress, access to your mail account will be requested, Google Account if you are registering with it or any other account that you wish to register with. Ingress game can be obtained from the Google Play Store.